The deal marks the first step towards the rollout of the company’s transformative three-year capex plan of $6.6 billion (Rs 55,000 crore).

The capex programme is directed towards expanding the 4G population coverage from 1.03 billion to 1.2 billion, launching 5G in key markets and capacity expansion in line with data growth.

The company has continued with its existing long-term partners Nokia and Ericsson and also onboarded Samsung as a new partner.

These contracts will allow the company to quickly capitalize on the latest equipment to offer enhanced customer experience.

Further, the learnings and insights obtained by the vendors in the Indian market over the last two years, will enable the company to embark on a more flexible and modular rollout plan by customising the services for all advanced technologies (4G & 5G).

In addition, the new equipment will also lead to efficiency gains in energy and thus lower operating costs.

The supplies against these new long-term awards will start in the coming quarter.

The capex is currently being funded out of the equity raise. For the long-term capex, the company is in advanced stage of discussions with its existing and new lenders to tie up Rs 250 billion of funded and Rs 100 billion of non-fund-based facilities.

Akshaya Moondra, CEO, Vodafone Idea, said: “We are committed to invest in emerging network technologies to provide a best-in-class experience to our customers.

We have kickstarted the investment cycle. We are on our journey of VIL 2.0 and from hereon, VIL will stage a smart turnaround to effectively participate in the industry growth opportunities.

Nokia and Ericsson have been our partners since our inception and this marks another milestone in that continuing partnership. We are pleased to start our new partnership with Samsung. We look forward to work closely with all our partners as we move into the 5G era.”

Vodafone Idea is an Aditya Birla Group and Vodafone Group partnership. It is amongst India's leading telecom service provider. The company provides pan India voice and data services across 2G, 3G and 4G platforms. The company holds large spectrum portfolio including mid band 5G spectrum in 17 circles and mmWave 5G spectrum in 16 circles.

The telecom service provider’s consolidated net loss narrowed to Rs 6,432.1 crore in Q1 FY25 as compared with Rs 7,840 crore reported in Q1 FY24. Revenue from operations decline marginally to Rs 10,508.3 crore in Q1 FY25 as against Rs 10,655.5 crore recorded in the corresponding quarter previous year.